Wicked Problem Project

Problem

Parents are still pretty much in the dark about what goes on in class on a day to day basis. They must wait for parent teacher meetings and portfolio showcases to get a solid grasp of what is going on. Students need and should give be given a wider audience to share their learning, their reflections and their thinking. Students and classes have no outlet to the outside world for immediate feedback and commentary.

Solution

In an age where Twitter is becoming the go-to medium for by-the-minute information sharing and news gathering we need to utilize Twitter in the classroom to bring this sort of modern day communication between our students and their families and the world outside of their classroom walls. My solution would be for a class to have their own Twitter account to try and utilize a very modern solution for a very old problem.

Breaking It Down

Due to my experiences in trying to implement this Twitter project near the end of a school term and in the middle of numerous other classroom activities my amended project (taken into account after feedback from Part D of the WPP assignment) will deem to lay out a plan of action to implement successfully a Twitter account for a class.

Timing

This is a major factor to take into account when planning this type of Twitter project. I would strongly advise that it is laid out and introduced to faculty in the one or two weeks before a new school year starts. I don't know how many weeks schools in America have for preparation without students but in the schools I have worked in there are one or two weeks of meetings and planning that would is an appropriate time to plan this Twitter project. Below is a timeline I have created, based on two weeks of planning time before students return to school.

Tweeting Project Time Line

Stakeholders

The stakeholders involved in this Twitter project are the administration, parents, teachers and students. They all need separate communications from the technology facilitator about the project.

Administrators:

They will need to be pre-instructed about the Twitter project a good deal in advance (a number of weeks or even months before teachers are introduced) so that any political or policy obstacles have to be overcome. The most obvious concern will be safety and if the school does not have cyber safety protocols in place then the publishing of work, pictures of students will have to be addressed, amended or the policy will have to changed in order for the school to place itself in a modern era of communications. Every school will be different so this part is vital to address as soon as possible.

Teachers:

Teachers (as described in the timeline) have to fully aware of and know all about Twitter before they will consider taking on this project. Examples of the advantages of Twitter will be included in the initial 1.1 meeting and all care will be taken to ensure that all teachers are comfortable with the use of Twitter in the classroom or at least be knowledgeable of Twitter and make an informed decision on whether they want to take it on.

Students:

Teachers along with the technology facilitator will introduce Twitter to the students in the first week of school.  Instructions and objectives are discussed with students. Examples of quality tweets and what a Tweet should inform a viewer about is discussed. 

Cyber safety will be revised and/or a number of lessons on cyber safety and digital citizenship from the Cybersmart Curriculum are implemented. Rules will be made by both students and teachers together on acceptable behavior online. 

A number of informative posters are shown and put up around the classroom to instill a knowledge of how Twitter differs from other types of communication.

Classroom Poster

Parents:

Parents are emailed within the first week of school to inform them on the Twitter project. It is obviously important to have the parents hop on board for the project to work successfully.A template of an email to be sent to parents is given to teachers who can edit as they see fit.

Email template here in Google Docs.

Execution

Teachers and students are encouraged to start Tweeting once the email to parents has been sent out and everyone is aware of the project. Routines are established within the classrooms and Tweeting duties may take different variations in each class. Some classes may assign Daily Twitterers or take on a more fluid approach and have a computer, laptop or smartphone accessible at any time for the students to tweet from.

After the first week or so teachers and facilitator should meet and discuss the initial few weeks and talk about any adjustments that may need to be made, what has worked well and what hasn't.

TP knowledge for the solution

The core technology that will be utilized will obviously be Twitter. The technological knowledge that our teachers have of Twitter will vary but introducing it to them will not be a hard task.
The main, underlying concept of this project is for the students to be able to share their learning and reflections to family (and the world) as it happens. Twitter helps this teaching and learning moment in a unique and obvious way due to the immediacy of Tweets, the audience a Tweet can reach and the ability for our followers to filter all our Tweets in one area using a Twitter desktop client. 

TC knowledge for the solution

As the learning and teaching content will be fluid, varied and can be represented in many different ways, Twitter is a perfect tool to represent all of the different facets of learning. Students will take photos, embed links to videos or any sort of media that the students wants to share. Students will also Tweet written reflections on their learning. Twitter will hone their reflecting techniques due to Twitter's 140 character input limit so it will add more of a challenge to the reflection process. Students will have to investigate their word choice and pinpoint the most important parts of their learning they want to Tweet.

PC knowledge for the solution

This project is, in essence, a solution to the problem of how students can share their learning and their reflections to their families and a wider audience for more authentic feedback and continued discussion. As it will be used in a wide variety of classes throughout the day and subjects the pedagogical approach to students learning the content will vary greatly. The most important part of our students' learning, though, is their reflections on what that have learned. So we will not, necessarily, change our pedagogical approach to teach the content but we will make sure the students are encouraged at any time to reflect using Twitter.

Student Experience

It is a small enough task for students not to get put off by it. It is a meaningful activity as it promotes students as authors to the world. The anticipation of getting more followers and to have conversations about their learning with a wider audience will provide engagement and motivation. 

The students will have not experienced anything like this before and it's hoped that this innovative way of communicating with family and people outside of the classroom walls will become common place in the future of our students' learning.

Implementation

Implementation would be as described as above under the "Breaking It Down" sub-section. Taking into account teacher feedback my revised implementation would not happen in the middle of a school year. Stakeholders, timing and execution are described as above and are a revision of my initial way I implemented the Twitter project with one Grade 5 class which is described below:

Surprises
As the planning for this was altered drastically from my initial plan to Tweet our field trip to Taiwan I've had to rush out an email to the parents of one class last week (it didn't help I was away at a conference for five days!). The plan is to trial run with it in one class to see what the experience is for students.

The surprises are and were that the number of replies have been sparse to say the least which leads me to.....

Unexpected bumps in the road (What you would revise)

Parents were not very responsive, only two responded to me. One to ask a question about the sign-up and one that was concerned about safety. I was actually expecting more queries about safety but as we had guidelines about safety in respect to our Grade 5 student blogs and would follow the same guidelines I guess it wasn't too much of an issue. At the minute we only have two parents following us so far. As the parents of our Grade 5 students have not been the most active responding to our students' blogs I guess this shouldn't be too much of a shock With moving to a new school next year I think any initiatives like this should be laid out at the start of the year, if a school's environment is not conducive or responsive to these types of initiatives (or not prepared)  then the uptake will be poor.

Delights (What went well)

The students were enthusiastic at first. Initial impressions from the classroom teacher were that the students were thinking more on things they can reflect on and Tweet about. They could tell the difference between the more planned blogging to the more immediate and spur-of-the-moment Tweeting.


However, after a couple of days there hasn't been much tweeting. I will be looking into this and the reasons why in my final presentation.

Pictures and/or vignettes

Evaluation

Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?

The project did not go as planned right from the get go! The timing was terrible to put it bluntly. We had portfolio day coming up and we are now on Easter break so mindsets were not switched on to implementing anything new in the classroom.


Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice


I still firmly believe that Twitter can be used very effectively as a communications tool in the Elementary classroom. It is immediate and opens up very effective and efficient communications between the students and parents and the outside world.
Even with the mere three Tweets that were sent out http://twitter.com/#!/g5isf I could get a sense of the way Twitter could work as a "as it happens" journal of what students are learning in class. 
The initial plan of Tweeting on a school trip is a very sound idea and one that I will implement in the future. School trips (especially overnight ones) are a time of worry and stress for parents wondering what is going on and what their children are doing and I think Twitter is an awesome idea to bridge the gap between school trip and home. It can fulfill both academic and emotional objectives nicely!


How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?


I will be doing this project again and I will plan it accordingly. But teachers, students and parents need to be given heads up a long time in advance about it. Moving to a new school next year I need to instill an environment that projects like this will happen and are valuable activities to partake in. If the mood is set at the start of the school year that technology will be an increasingly used tool then projects like these will be implemented and used easier.


What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?


Don't plan a technology integrated project without substantial thought and planning first. This Twitter activity was and is something that can become a major part of the daily classroom life so preparation, discussion and lessons regarding social media, digital citizenship/safety and teacher meetings are essential. The project will fail if not enough planning is done.


In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again, and what will you change or not do?

This is my job and this is what I do. I will be doing projects like this very regularly in the course of my work in schools. I will implement a Twitter classroom next school year, that is a goal. I'm thinking I can try it out on an Early Years classroom as parents are a lot more interested in what their children are up to in those Grades! But I also want classrooms to be blogging too so I need to think about it over the Summer, I need to meet with teachers and administration to scope out the atmosphere and thinking about technology at my new school. Then, and only then, will I make final decisions on what best suits the environment of the school.

Appropriate for your chosen audience

Using Twitter in the classroom facilitated by teachers in any Grade level is appropriate and relevant to the times we live in. Students can take more control or less control of the Twitter account as the teacher sees fit. I believe using Twitter for communicating classroom learning could play a big part in the coming years in schools due to the no-cost, shallow learning curve and fast and effective proof of the value of using it.

Professional Learning Plan

What skill sets do you still need to increase?


I came into CEP810, 811 and 812 not knowing what to expect at all. At the start of 810 I wanted to spend more time thinking about technology in the bigger picture of education. I wanted to get more insight from "the other side", the classroom teacher's viewpoint. As I have never been a classroom teacher (in the traditional sense of the world), and have all my experience as a technology teacher I wanted to learn to be more aware of that angle. I feel like I have done before I undertook these courses but learning the TPACK model was one of the major moments for me. It's a model I will always come back to and I have shared it with parents and teachers alike since I was introduced to it..

I still need to develop my thinking on what teachers and parents want and need to know about educational technology. As you can see TPACK was over most of the parents' heads but I felt they needed to know what my job was and what I and teachers worked towards. These courses have given me a path to go down and I want to work more on teacher and parent workshops to introduce, inform and showcase educational technology resources and techniques.


What other literature or theory do you want to connect with? 


Moving to a new school next year I want to bring with me a solid knowledge of why and how educational technology is a core part of modern day teaching and learning. These three MSU courses have helped me formulate these thoughts into actions and words and has made me more confident in my profession. I still want to continue researching TPACK and it's usage. Is it something I just have in my thoughts, is it something that teachers need to know? I think it really helps teachers understand my role and they begin to realize that I help them with the technological knowledge "part" so they shouldn't feel pressure to...at first!

In addition to understand more about education in general and technology I will be looking more into the PYP and the role technology plays. I'm lucky enough to have got a sneak peek at the IBO's document about Technology in the PYP and I'm happy to see it follows NETS and my philosophy quite closely.

How will you pave your way and make sense of the opportunities you are exposed to? 


I will continue what I'm doing. I've been very busy this year in my new role and the fact I was undertaking two separate courses at two different universities. A lot of my year was punctuated by deadlines and evening classes rather than student report cards and parent meetings! Going back to being a timetabled technology teacher but with a major role in driving educational technology forward in my new school next year will be equally as challenging. Especially if, as I plan to do so, I start the MAET with MSU in the Fall.

Being exposed to the scheduled and timetabled assignments in the CEP courses has given me a very good sense of how PD could be delivered to teachers and what path those PD sessions could take. The courses has also formed more opinions in my mind about what works and what does not. I have made my mind up on WebQuests, Prezi and Jing amongst others and their part in the educational technology 


How are you going to take what you learned here and integrate it into your personal and professional workflows?  


All the core concepts and methods that I experienced in these courses are naturally applicable to my professional workflow. Online and mobile learning have been important parts of my life now for a number of years. When I taught I never gave students handouts and the portfolios they created were always digital. I will bring this concept to my new school as I know they have not gone for this method yet. I live a mobile life myself, everything is accessible on my mobile phone and when my iPhone was stolen this year I felt, for the first time in years, disconnected from the world.

What specific goals do you have between now and next summer in your teaching practice? How specifically do you plan to accomplish these?


I will be working with Grade 5 up until the end of the Summer holidays. I feel like I haven't worked with them enough and I have focused more on the earlier grades as the teachers there needed more assistance in planning and implementing technology integrated activities.  The Grade 5 teachers are more accomplished and able in working with technology so I worked with them minimally throughout the year. I will work with Grade 5 up until the Summer to help them with Common Craft and Green Screen video creating. We will also create a Blogging License document which will allow students to open up their password protected blogs to the world if they meet a certain number of standards in the Blogging License. So a very packed few months left with Grade 5.

Which goals do you think you can accomplish on your own, which do you need help with, and where might that help come from?


I always require teacher support when working with their students. With my Grade 5 goals I have already timetable events with the teachers as if it doesn't fit in with their schedule then we have problems. I have liaised with our Principal of our school about the blogging license as it requires a dramatic shift in our "closed wall" environment our administration has always supported. With the past year of closed wall blogging behind us the Principal was "swayed" into agreeing with me that students should have their blogging open to more commenting and viewing outside our school environment.

What is important to you as you develop both personally and professionally?


Some people may not agree with me but it is important that I am not seen as a technology bully or just known as "the tech guy".  I have always had a large amount of empathy for technophobe teachers and just like we need to differentiate for students it is even more important to differentiate for teachers. I feel it is important to be friendly, approachable and humorous in my day to day life (both professionally and personally). I believe it helps break down any barriers or traverses any bridges between the technology and the teacher. I see myself as the toll-guy. The toll is free and I'll lift any barriers that are in the way. I may even point out the fantastic scenery on the way...